Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 11 | Page 42

FEATURE: DATA CENTRE SOLUTIONS Siemon helps Flexenclosure create a data centre of excellence for ACS When Flexenclosure was selected to build a prefabricated data centre for ACS, the company turned to Siemon to provide the cabling infrastructure that fitted the customer’s requirements for customisation and scalability. A s one of the world’s leading designers, manufacturers and builders of modular prefabricated data centres, Flexenclosure only uses best-in-class components within its facilities. That’s why it used cutting-edge network infrastructure technology from Siemon throughout a new facility it created for Angola Comunicações e Sistemas (ACS). Challenge Located on the western coast of Southern Africa, Angola is divided into 18 provinces, with the city of Luanda being the capital. One of the continent’s 42 INTELLIGENTCIO major oil producers, Angola is striving hard to tackle the physical, social and political legacy of a 27-year civil war that lasted until 2002. As part of this rebuilding process, the country has done much to improve its IT solutions and network connectivity infrastructure, with ACS leading the way in providing private networks, hosted data and other related Internet services to the private and public sectors including banks, government departments and entities across Angola. ACS has rapidly expanded its business in recent years and was fast outgrowing its main data centre facility, which was not only too small, but also unsuitable to house highly sensitive ICT equipment. To compound the issue, the construction of many larger buildings around it was causing line of sight problems for its Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) antennae – a significant issue with many of ACS’ corporate banking clients relying on ACS for mission critical services. Having considered its options, ACS identified a large greenfield site in Benfica, the rapidly expanding new business and commercial area of Luanda, at which to locate its new data centre facility. www.intelligentcio.com